


Another Man's Blessing

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek/Safety OTP, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 09:23:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1261210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek gets cursed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Man's Blessing

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Verity for beta! This is my own little contribution to the "Derek Hale has a nice day" subgenre.

In the same level, patient tone she'd made all of her other demands, the witch said, "If you won't expel the monster from your pack, then I will."

She made a casual-looking gesture in Derek's direction, and suddenly Derek couldn't hear the heartbeats of his pack or of the witch. He could see the others shouting as they reacted to whatever it was she'd done, but he couldn't hear that, either. He couldn't hear anything but the pounding of his own heart, suddenly loud in contrast to the silence that pressed in on him.

The pack members were all looking around frantically, not quite in Derek's direction. Isaac ran off somewhere, Stiles made one wild gesture and then fell back warily to hold Scott's flank, and Kira seemed to be making a methodical survey, turning slowly on her heel. Allison and Lydia had gone into their respective silent-stalking modes, Allison walking slowly toward him, squinting at the ground as if to start tracking while the set of Lydia's mouth looked as if she were humming to herself, warming up to some use of her power. 

Scott, alpha that he was, confronted the witch directly, not shouting but leaning in menacingly toward her. Derek took a step forward from the spot where he'd stood quietly apart from the others through the futile attempt at peace negotiations. "Scott, don't--"

His own voice sounded flat, not even echoing back at him but swallowed up as if he were speaking into the ground. No one gave any sign of hearing him any more than they could see him. He couldn't smell any of them, and if he was what they were all looking for then Scott and Isaac couldn't smell him standing right here. His sight of all of them--of everything more than about six inches from his own body--was oddly shadowed. The color had leached out of his vision, as though the sun had set without his noticing.

Derek reached out with his hands, testing the boundaries of the spell as he took a few deep breaths. He didn't seem to be in danger of being suffocated by the shadow around him. When he tried another step forward, Derek found he could move easily enough, but when he walked over to Scott and reached for him, Scott sidled away without seeming to notice Derek's presence or feeling any contact. The witch herself didn't seem to see Derek either, still focusing coolly on Scott even when Derek tried to get her attention.

Derek couldn't get his hand within a foot of Scott. Kira was the same, and so were Allison and Lydia. They edged away when he got too close, never looking toward him, without seeming to notice what they were doing. None of them appeared to feel anything when the outer edge of the spell touched them. Stiles bounced off Derek's presence like a pinball, but that might just have been Stiles lunging forward at that point in the argument to make his own point.

The witch shook her head, dusting her hands in a gesture even Derek could read as _my work here is done_. She turned her back on Scott, on Allison, Lydia, Stiles, Kira--on all the most dangerous people for miles around--and walked calmly away without looking back. Derek lost sight of her when she entered the trees, and the others reacted as though they'd lost her as well.

Isaac came loping back out of the trees when Scott seemed to shout for him. Scott gave directions to Isaac, Allison, and Kira, and all three nodded solemnly and took off, heading back through the woods toward the place where they'd left the cars. 

Once they were gone Scott said something to Lydia, who was still standing very still with her head tilted, concentrating. Stiles was prowling around them, just as intently focused on something. He nodded a couple of times, and then Lydia closed her eyes, turned her face this way and that with her lips parted--she must know he was close enough not to require a full-throated scream. After a few seconds of listening, she raised a hand to point unerringly at Derek.

Derek edged sideways a few steps. Lydia didn't open her eyes, but her pointing finger followed him. 

Scott nodded again and closed his own eyes, holding out one hand. He walked straight to Derek, his outstretched hand hovering near Derek's shadow-boundary. When he opened his eyes they were lit up red, and he was looking in Derek's direction but not quite _at_ him. Derek was invisible even to his alpha, but it was obvious that Scott could still tell he was there.

When Scott began to speak, Derek found that he could hear him, faintly. Scott sounded like he was two miles away and downwind, but Derek could make out the words if he closed his eyes and listened.

"She said you're shunned," Scott said. "She didn't sound like she was lying, and she said you wouldn't be harmed. Stiles says shunning is an Amish punishment, so I guess we pissed off a pacifist witch. We can't hear or smell you, but Lydia can still find you and I can still feel you. The witch says if I choose to call you back on the full moon the shunning will end. I'm going to, Derek, but that's a week away."

Derek opened his eyes to take in the slightly pained and anxious look on Scott's face as he went on, "I will call you. But it might mean, you know, alpha-calling. Sorry."

Scott was still squeamish about using the full extent of his alpha powers on his pack, rather than to protect them, but Derek wasn't going to argue with being compelled if it meant he could end this curse. It meant he was, despite everything, still a part of Scott's pack. Stiles and Lydia were flanking Scott now, Lydia looking thoughtfully in Derek's direction while Stiles looked everywhere else.

"Are you okay for now?" Scott added, frowning thoughtfully, and Derek nodded, even though Scott couldn't see him. He wasn't hurt, and he didn't seem to be in any immediate danger from the curse. "I'll find you, if you're not, or you can come to me and I'll know you're there, and we'll figure something out. But if you're all right Stiles and Lydia both think it's safer to just wait this out. Okay? Uh, left for yes, right for no?"

Derek took a broad step to the left, and Scott tracked the movement and then said, "Wait, um--that was your left? Shit. Your left--that way--for yes, the other way for no."

Derek couldn't help smiling tightly as he took another step to the left.

Scott ventured a cautious smile that felt like a response to Derek's, even if it couldn't be. "Okay, uh--"

Stiles said something that made Scott wince and nod before he refocused on Derek.

"Uh, I don't know what will happen if you try to drive like this, but maybe--don't, if you can help it."

Derek winced too, imagining how badly that could go. 

"Okay," Scott repeated, and then a different grade of stubborn look crossed his face and he pressed forward with his extended hand. Derek watched, curious, as Scott tried to force his way through the shadow.

It wasn't like a mountain ash line, though. There was no fixed boundary for Scott to power through. When he got the angle just right Derek found himself stepping backward, and when Scott followed him and tried again--Derek braced his feet and tried to break through from his side this time--Scott's hand just slid off to one side or the other.

Derek finally took a step to the right, and another when Scott turned to try it again. Stiles caught his arm then, and Derek thought he caught _no_ on Stiles's lips as he spoke to Scott.

The red faded from Scott's eyes, and his expression turned young and tired. He raised a hand to wave goodbye to Derek, and Derek waved back pointlessly, watching his alpha and the last of his pack walk away.

When they were gone Derek was alone in the forest, and he set to work figuring out his exact limitations. He'd been able to hear Scott, so he wasn't entirely cut off. Inhaling deeply, he caught the ghost of summer leaves and the warm complex smell of the ground, dim traces of his pack and the witch.

Derek knelt and found that he could touch the grass underfoot. He stayed there for a little while, just running his palm back and forth over the cool softness of the grass, the edges of each blade slightly sharp, almost sticky when he pressed his fingers to them. He plucked a blade and held it under his nose, and he could smell _that_ as clearly as ever, sharply green and bright, slightly sour when he touched it to his tongue. 

He was thirsty suddenly--it was a warm day, not really hot, but the sun was out for once. The sweat running down his back hadn't turned cold on him. He looked around and headed downhill at an angle, making for the nearest branch of the river.

When he found running water it was a shallow stream, not much more than knee-deep, though the depth of its banks suggested it ran higher in the spring and fall. Derek walked down to the muddy edge and then trotted along it until the stream ran into a larger creek that ran deeper and clearer. He took his boots and socks off and, after eyeing the water and looking around, the rest of his clothes as well. He knew well enough not to drink the slow-moving water at the creek's edge, and he didn't need to add walking around in wet jeans to the curse he was already under.

The water behaved normally when Derek stepped into it, running cool against his skin. The smell of the creek was muted to a faint hint of mud and water and vegetation, and the rushing of the water was almost silenced, although he could hear the splashes of it against his skin. Derek crouched, scooping up water in his cupped hands. As soon as he lifted his hands free of the creek he could smell the water fully, his senses suddenly overwhelmed by it: rusty and mineral-laced, but clear and clean. He drank eagerly, pausing each time he scooped up water to smell it again, until he wasn't thirsty anymore. 

Derek stayed in his crouch, looking down into the water around his legs. He could see little shapes flitting, but the cloud of gnats didn't come closer to him, and the little minnows and tadpoles didn't brush against his legs. When he wiggled his toes against the silty streambed he couldn't find so much as a worm touching him. He waded out further, training his eyes on the deeper water. The fish were harder to see with his vision hindered by the spell, but he could spot the shadows of their movements if he tried. Derek made himself still, letting one hand sink slowly under the water and flexing his fingers rhythmically, imitating the aimless stirring of the waterweeds under the surface. 

The fish all veered away from him, though, obeying the same boundary he'd seen on land. When he tried to strike instead of waiting for a fish to come to him, it was pushed away before his fingers came anywhere near it. It wasn't just people he couldn't touch; his shunning seemed to extend to every kind of animal. 

"No hunting, then," he muttered aloud. He'd have to feed himself some other way. He couldn't remember if there was any food in his kitchen; he'd been kind of distracted for the past few days, helping Scott and the rest of the pack deal with the witch. With the way she'd taken against him and his blue eyes, he might as well have stayed home and baked cookies instead.

His stomach grumbled at the thought of cookies, and Derek glared at it. He waded out further into the water, until it was waist deep and running fast enough that he could feel the tug of the current. He ducked into a flat dive, submerging himself in the cool water, and started swimming, pulling himself through the water toward the still-faster currents he knew lay ahead. He set a fast pace when he reached the river, forcing his muscles to strain enough to make him forget to be hungry, forget being cursed, forget....

Derek stopped swimming for a few seconds when he realized what he was thinking. He started to sink through the cool water, still being pushed by the current, until he hauled himself to the surface in a few powerful strokes. When his head broke the surface he felt like he'd come up from under more than just water, and he swam quickly to the edge and climbed out to stand on a sun-warm rock and look around again.

He was cursed to be set apart from every living thing. No one could see him. No one could smell him, or hear him, or touch him any more than he could touch them. No one but Scott or Lydia could find him at all, and even they would only know where he was; even they couldn't get through the shadow that surrounded him. No one could. Nothing could. The witch herself hadn't been able to see him once she cast the spell. No one could get at him at all.

Derek turned in a slow circle, straining his limited senses to take in the woods around him. There were birds in the trees, and while he couldn't hear them he thought they were probably singing. Birdsong was a sign of safety that Derek had rarely experienced; if he wasn't being very careful to be still, he was the dangerous thing that made the birds go quiet. But he couldn't hurt anything now, and nothing could hurt him.

He'd been bracing himself to cope with another ordeal, but there was nothing to endure in this. Derek tilted his face up toward the sun; it looked dim from inside Derek's shadow, but he felt the warmth of it on his face. He could close his eyes. He could stand still. If anything was coming after him now, it wasn't going to find him. He let the sun shine down on him until he was nearly dry, and then dove into the river to swim back to his clothes.

* * *

Derek didn't bother to dress right away. He had nothing to dry off on and no one could see him, so he gathered his stuff into a bundle and walked through the woods to dry off, stopping every so often to watch squirrels and rabbits and once even a deer not running away from him. He couldn't help going into instinctive stalking mode when he saw the deer, creeping carefully up to it, but when he got within six feet he couldn't bear watching it stand there oblivious to the predator approaching. He picked up a branch and tossed it across the little clearing, and the clatter of it was enough to send the deer leaping away out of sight.

At the edge of the woods Derek got dressed, standing there for a moment to get used to the change from nakedness. He didn't do it as much now--it was usually too dangerous--but when he was younger he'd spent plenty of time running around the woods half-dressed or not dressed at all. Laura had learned the full shift while she was still in middle school, and teased him endlessly about not getting the hang of it. His mother had said it was harder for betas. She'd told him not to stop trying, even though it was mostly something a werewolf learned early or not at all. Derek hadn't minded much whether he ever learned to take the shape of the wolf the way his mother and sister could; he'd liked feeling the wind on his skin, rolling around in the grass and swimming in the river and being just as much of a wolf as he already was. But the woods had been safe then, with room for a child to run around unprotected.

Derek opened his eyes, startled to realize he'd closed them without thinking. He thought he saw something in his peripheral vision--a blur of darkness, his mother--but when he turned his head there was nothing there, just some branches waving in the wind. Derek shook his head and stepped out of the trees, heading through the grassy area around the Preserve's eastern entrance. He had to walk a mile down the county road, but it was a pleasant walk. He entertained himself by flashing his eyes and fangs at passing cars and watching the way they didn't see a thing. 

He stopped that game when he got into town, but he didn't stop watching the way no one saw him. There were plenty of people out on this sunny afternoon, but no one noticed that they were stepping aside to give him room on the sidewalk. There were none of those up-and-down looks from strangers that always made him feel vaguely hunted, and none of those prey-reactions people had to him sometimes, which made him feel even worse. There were just crowds of oblivious humans on the sidewalk, going about their business, leaving him utterly alone. He couldn't even hear their heartbeats, couldn't smell them beyond a vague aggregate whiff of _people_. He didn't have to know who was upset or angry or excited. He could ignore them as if they were all as invisible as he was. 

Derek found himself closing his eyes again as he walked the last couple of blocks to his apartment, turning his face up toward the sun and letting his feet take him to the familiar destination. He stopped just inside the door--even his dimmed sight could see that someone had been here--but the openness of the space let him see at a glance that they were gone now. The extent of the change since he'd left seemed to be the addition of a trio of reusable shopping bags sitting on the kitchen counter. Derek shut the door behind himself, locked it, and walked over warily.

The bags were full of food--produce, bread, and rice filled two of them, and Derek could smell Scott on the handles of the bags. He dug through the contents, enjoying the way singular scents burst in on him when he lifted out the bunch of cilantro, the tomatoes and peppers, the grapes and oranges and spinach and sweet potatoes. Even the aromas of wheat bread and rice were fascinating when they were the only things he could smell, and Derek stood there for a while breathing deeply over each item in turn.

The third bag held two bags of tortilla chips--the fresh ones made locally, Derek could smell the oil through the paper bag when he picked them up--and a handful of plain Hershey bars underneath. Derek detected Stiles's encyclopedic knowledge of the pack's snack food preferences even before he caught Stiles's scent. Derek ripped open one of the paper bags and ate the first chip, savoring the plain corn-and-oil taste, the fresh crunch and the just-enough tang of the salt. He felt vaguely guilty for eating them plain--chips were for salsa--but then there was no one here to mock his choice.

On a hunch he checked the fridge and found it stocked with fresh meat and eggs--Scott's conscientiousness as an alpha clearly extended as far as well-balanced meals. Derek poked the chicken cautiously, but apparently he could touch _dead_ animals just fine. He shuffled ingredients in his head, thinking of the one-pot meals he and Laura had lived off of in the year after the fire. He had everything he needed for chicken and black bean casserole, and he could cook enough to last him a few days. His stomach grumbled again, and this time he didn't have to ignore it; he went back and grabbed another corn chip from the bag.

It was only then that he saw the note in Scott's careful handwriting lying on the counter. _Your phone goes straight to voicemail so we figured you probably can't call or text us, but maybe you can write notes? I'll check back tomorrow to see if you need anything else._

Derek he pulled his phone out to check, and it was no surprise to see that the _No Service_ message stayed on the screen no matter what he did. He tried every corner of the apartment, waving the phone high overhead, even holding it out the windows, but nothing changed. He considered setting it down to get it out of the spell's shadow, but he was a little worried that he wouldn't be able to pick it up again if he did. He pocketed the useless phone and turned over Scott's note.

Derek stared at the paper for a moment, wondering what note to leave, what to tell Scott about the way the curse didn't feel much like a curse at all. Finally he gave up and wrote, _Thanks_.

With the questions of food and communication with the pack both settled, Derek wandered over to the bed with the bag of tortilla chips. 

He could do anything he wanted to, literally anything. It occurred to him vaguely that he should probably have considered a wider scope for _anything_. If the witch really thought he was so dangerous, shouldn't she have done something to him that didn't make him a perfect cat burglar? But he could have gotten away with almost any of that kind of crime that he wanted to anyway, just being a werewolf. Taking other people's stuff had never tempted him. 

All Derek wanted was to have a pack and to be left alone; right now he had both in a way he'd never thought possible. The absence of privacy was usually the built-in price of a werewolf family, and he and Laura had bounced between living in each other's pockets and splitting up to live in different time zones for as long as they could bear the separation. But now there was this, a pack that would look out for him--Derek touched the bag to his nose, catching the scent of Stiles's skin where it wasn't covered by the smell of the chips, and then he ate another one--but didn't know where he was right now. They couldn't know if they wanted to. 

The fact of it--being entirely alone, entirely hidden--just kept echoing in the back of his head, persistent as his pulse. He'd never had both a pack and this much privacy before; there was always the likelihood of another wolf hearing or seeing, just _knowing_ what he was up to.

Derek tossed the chips onto the bed--no one could lecture him about crumbs out of place or tease him for being lazy--and then stripped his clothes off again. He pushed the bed toward the windows, until every inch of it was in sunlight. For now he didn't care what anyone could see through the windows, or how easily anyone could get at him while he was asleep. No one could touch him. 

He flipped the blankets down and sprawled out on the sheets, naked in the sun, and propped his head on a pillow. He ate tortilla chips for a while, staring thoughtfully down his own body as he crunched one after another, licking salt from his fingers when the grittiness of it got annoying.

He felt pleasantly present in his body today. The swim and walk had been enough activity to warm up his muscles and make him feel like he'd made good use of himself without being really tiring. He wasn't horny in the way that he usually thought of it, didn't feel that helpless need burning low in his belly, but he could jerk off and it would feel good. He licked his left hand clean very thoroughly, leaving it a little wet before he reached down, gripping his dick loosely and giving it a few slow strokes. It did feel good, but still not urgent, and Derek gave it up after a minute. He tucked his damp and dick-smelling hand behind his head as he went on eating corn chips.

There was no rush. The curse was going to last a week. He could do anything he wanted to, and for now he could lie in the sun and be content. 

"Thanks," Derek said aloud, smiling, even though the witch couldn't hear him any better than anyone else.


End file.
